


you were scared and you were beautiful

by twobirdsofficial



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, Guilt, Lesbian AU, affectionately known as:, and other fun stuff, burnout au, gay repression, i don't fully Get lesbian aus but i am here and it is happening for reasons unknown, i guess...., longer than originally planned, mostly i keep listening to fucking art angels, now featuring:, when u can't let them be happy even in an au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 02:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11796486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsofficial/pseuds/twobirdsofficial
Summary: they're eighteen and fucked up. aka, small-town gays smoke weed behind their old high school and talk about wanting to die. and make out.now featuring a slightly-more-uplifting epilogue [party hat emoji]





	1. tell me anything you feel like

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for all of katya's usual issues, namely suicidal thoughts and addiction, and trixie's usual issues aka repression and a bad home life. 
> 
> title from grimes' "realiti."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "artangels," the song, from art angels, the album.

“Katya.”

The girl on the other side of the counter blows her a red-lipsticked kiss. “The same.”

Trixie is already reaching for Katya’s usual brand of cigarettes. She pushes them across the counter. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, uh.” Katya fingers the carton and glances around quickly. “Do you know where I can get some weed?”

Trixie jerks her head in the direction of her manager, who’s trying to look busy next to the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. “His shit sucks though.”

She looks Katya over, from tangled blonde hair to battered combat boots. “Can you wait three hours? I get off at two.”

* * *

Trixie reapplies blush in the gas station bathroom while Katya leans against the wall outside, exhaling smoke into the air. She watches a greasy trucker refuel at the diesel pump until Trixie emerges like a pink cloud as she crushes a cigarette butt under her boot.

Trixie has weed in a baggie in her purse and Katya has a mess of rolling papers in her back pocket. Trixie’s car is about five years past its expiration date, held together mostly with hot pink duct tape. It takes three tries for the ignition to catch, and then they rattle out of the parking lot and down the road, shuddering over potholes.

They pull into the high school parking lot, abandoned for summer. It’s mostly dirt, criss-crossed with tire-trampled spray paint lines. Trixie parks in the corner.

They both know the tunnels behind the school; they were made for flooding runoff but haven’t gotten much use in the drought. They’ve never visited them together.

“I smoked out here during every fucking pep rally,” Trixie says.

Katya snorts. She lit another cigarette in the car; it smolders between her fingertips. “I gave my first blowjob here.” She sits cross-legged on the damp ground. “And dropped acid, like, twice.”

Trixie rolls her eyes. “Fuck this place.” She folds her knees under her and motions for the papers. Katya hands them over. “Did you have, uh, what’s his name—Mr. Daverworth?”

“That fucking creep,” Katya says. “‘Oh, Miss Mattel, are you struggling with the material?’” She leans into Trixie in a mockery of the history teacher, breathing smoky breath inches from her face. “‘You know I offer private tutoring…’”

“He did not!” Trixie screeches.

Katya shakes her head. “Dana Parker. He told her to ask her parents. She didn't, thank God, but…” She gives up on finishing the thought. She's fingering yet another cigarette, the previous one still dangling from her mouth. Instead of lighting it she unrolls it, peeling away paper until she reaches the tobacco. “Do you do spliffs?”

“Not really,” says Trixie. “I can roll one for you, though.” She dusts off a paper and grimaces. “I hope you like lint smoke, oh my God. How long were these in your pocket?”

Katya sucks in cigarette smoke and blows it in Trixie’s face, cackling, like they’ve known each other for years. They kind of have—Trixie wore pink tutus in fifth grade and Katya made the bathrooms smell like cigarette smoke in eighth and they were even in the same algebra class once.

“I think I asked to copy your homework,” Trixie says. “And you said no, you bitch.”

“You think I did my homework?” Katya snorts. “I was lucky if I was fucking conscious.”

“Oh shit, were you the chick with the vodka water bottle?”

Katya shrugs. “I’m trying not to do that anymore.”

Trixie licks the edge of the rolling paper. “Good for you.” She holds her hand out for the lighter, and Katya hands it over. “I know some people who could use that fucking self-control.”

“Well,” Katya says. “Trying.” She picks up a rock from the ground and tosses it into the tunnel; it clangs and echoes into a dull ringing sound. She lifts up the water bottle at her side. “Just water.”

“Okay, let me smell that,” Trixie says, laughing. It should feel inappropriate but it doesn’t, and Katya throws the plastic bottle at Trixie’s torso. She opens it up and sniffs. “You got off this time. But I’m watching you.”

“I could fucking use it.”

Joint clamped between her teeth, Trixie finishes Katya’s spliff and passes it over. Katya snuffs out the end of her cigarette and holds out the spliff; Trixie clicks the lighter on and holds the flame to the end of it.

Katya inhales and then sighs, smoke blowing through her nostrils. “So what the fuck, right? What are we doing here.” It's been two months and she feels like she's in suspended animation, waiting for someone to tell her what to do next.

To be fair, they did tell her. She just didn't listen.

Trixie isn't going to college, either. At least not away, not like Katya’s freak friends who all wanted to get out as soon as possible, who buckled down and took some Adderall and aced the SATs on the strength of their own desperation. “Maybe the CC,” she says. “Like, I don't know. I don't know shit, I used to want to go to beauty school but the closer I get to that the more I'm like...fuck all those bitches, you know?” Her joint is smoldering between her fingers. “It's like, you're just far enough away from what they want you to be.”

Katya chortles. “I'm on another fucking planet, bitch. I'm not even in the same galaxy of what I'm supposed to be.”

Trixie rolls her eyes. “You make art, though, right?”

Katya shifts. “Yeah, uh. I guess.” It's stupid, crazy shit that has colonized her bedroom and started tentacling its way into the rest of the house. Her mother, god bless her, has accepted the voodoo dolls and bloodstained statuary with her usual grace. “Something art-adjacent, anyway.”

Trixie nods. “That's so fucking cool, like, for real.”

Katya tosses a pebble into the tunnel, to hear the clang and avoid having to respond to the compliment. “So what about you? Mid-sized gas stations your calling?”

“Yes, girl, I'm putting down roots in this town.” She poses, joint in hand, full fashion model, and she sounds so like an old-timey country singer that Katya laughs out loud.

“Not me, bitch. I'm out as soon as I have a hundred bucks.” She inhales again and it's starting to hit her, a haziness in her arms and legs. “‘Course, I keep fucking spending it on weed.”

Trixie grins. “God, you ever feel like a dropout?”

“Girl, every day. Every day!” Katya gets more emphatic than she intended and ash goes flying. In the split second after, she imagines the dry grasses catching fire, then the school, the town.

The ashes land harmlessly. She continues: “It’s like we graduated but we still dropped out, in people's eyes—we dropped out of their plan, you know?”

“Exactly!” Trixie’s hand smacks her own thigh. “Like, I don't know. What were you planning to do?”

“Honestly?” Katya exhales. “Honestly, I thought I’d be dead by now.”

Trixie nods slowly, almost rhythmically. She looks away, like she's trying to give Katya privacy, and the words leave a silence that feels oppressive until Trixie finally breaks it. “Girl. I am so fucking hungry.”

Katya laughs. “Good luck. I have, uh…” She rummages in her pockets and presents a lint-covered handful of items: a round blue pill, a melted Hershey’s kiss, several loose peanuts.

Trixie takes the chocolate and licks it out of the foil. “I never wanted to die,” she says, thoughtful with chocolate on her lips. “Not consistently.”

Katya looks at her.

“It's like, the biggest fuck you you can give, right?”

“Killing yourself?” Katya asks, just as Trixie says, “Staying alive.”

Trixie screeches with laughter and Katya joins in, her own laugh breathless and absurd. “Oh my God!” Trixie yelps. “Oh my God. Difference between you and me, bitch.”

Katya snorts. Her spliff is smoldering in her hand and she brings it to her mouth again, tries to inhale but chokes on her laughter.

Trixie’s kicked her shoes off, and she wiggles her toes. “If you were dead you couldn't smoke with me behind a shitty high school.”

Katya rolls her eyes and blows smoke into the air. “If I were dead I wouldn't have to ride shotgun in your shitty car.”

Trixie snorts. “Where's _your_ car, bitch?”

“Oh, you know.” She waves her hand airily. “In the alternate universe where I don't have a crippling anxiety disorder.”

“Oh fuck,” says Trixie. “You really can't drive?”

Katya cackles. “No, bitch. Too busy being trapped in fucking existential horror.”

Trixie blows smoke into her face. “Then don't say shit about my car!” She's giggling and Katya joins in, choking on her inhale.

Katya feels something on her shoulder; she holds out her hand and feels another drop. “Holy shit,” she says. “Rain?”

Trixie starts laughing again, looking up at the sky until the water makes her mascara bleed. “What the fuck.”

They haven't seen rain in months, and rivulets of dusty water run down the slope through dry leaves, trickling into the hollow where Trixie and Katya are sitting. It picks up, heavy and intense, and Trixie yelps and jumps up from the ground to run for the car. Katya follows a moment later, taking a second to untangle her sharp-angled limbs before running after Trixie with an awkward lope.  
Katya tumbles into the car through the passenger seat only to discover Trixie already in it, damp and flushed from the run.

“Why didn't you get in the driver’s side, you absolute cunt?” Katya says, laughing. She's fallen on Trixie’s lap and she's breathless from running and laughing and trying to chase after Trixie, who's deceptively fast in heels.

“This was closer,” Trixie says, still out of breath, and Katya likes the way the makeup’s running down her cheeks and she can see the genuine blush underneath. She turns in the seat until she’s half facing Trixie and she feels her heartbeat pound in her neck as she leans in.

Trixie tastes like nothing, or like smoke and weed and sweat, or like lipstick. Katya grips her side and Trixie is kissing back; she's holding Katya’s waist and her tongue is sliding against Katya’s, and she makes a breathy sound when Katya’s nails dig into her.

Katya turns again, adjusting so she has a knee on either side of Trixie’s lap, and dips her head down and nips at the soft skin of Trixie’s neck. The rain is thundering on the roof of the car and it makes Katya feel dizzy, like nothing is real except the places where she and Trixie are touching.

Trixie’s warm and soft, and Katya tugs at her lower lip, moving her hand to Trixie’s thigh, just below the hem of her skirt. Trixie whines into her mouth.

Trixie is sucking the skin of Katya’s neck, bruising, when the rain fades away. Katya pulls back, gasping, and she sees Trixie’s face change in front of her to something afraid, and then again to almost stony.

“This was a bad idea.”

Katya’s stomach drops. “It—what?”

Trixie's shaking her head, looking more through Katya than at her.

“Get off me,” she says.

Katya stares for a split second before she pulls the door handle and scrambles off of Trixie’s lap. Trixie gets up and smooths out her skirt before walking around to the driver’s side.

Shakily, Katya gets back in the passenger seat. It's warm from Trixie sitting in it.

She spends the whole ride home staring straight ahead, and she doesn't see Trixie looking at her as she walks away.


	2. when you get bored of me i'll be back on the shelf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trixie has a crisis and runs out of gas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was NOT supposed to be more than one chapter but it will now be at least three? we'll see where it goes idk i wrote this in one sitting and it's mildly autobiographical. warnings for like, so much internalized homophobia lmao. & some very vague references to abuse or at least a shitty home life. it's trixie, so.
> 
> title from "california" from art angels.

Trixie drives away from the too-suburban house past overgrown hedges and late-model cars.

She can’t breathe. Air comes in gasps but she keeps driving, past empty dirt lots and progressively more run-down houses, past the turn for her own house. Her hands are rigid on the steering wheel, white-knuckled. The tail end of the rainstorm patters on the roof and it’s the only sound she can hear but she’s not sure she could move to turn on the radio; she stares straight ahead at the road stretching out before her.

By the time the road turns to dirt, she feels like her arms can move again. She pushes the power button on the radio but nothing sounds right; she changes between the country, top 40, and oldies stations that populate the radio until she finally switches to AM and starts flipping through. Baseball, a 24-hour preacher, a station devoted to right-wing yelling. She settles on an eerie Catholic station that sounds like a woman doing penance.  _ Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  _

It’s too early for sunset. Trixie wants it to be nighttime, so she can go home and sneak inside when everyone’s asleep and cry into her mattress and not speak to anyone until morning. Maybe even afternoon, if she’s lucky. But it’s July, and night refuses to come, and she keeps driving.

_ Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. _

Trixie’s turned around and started toward home by the time her car shudders and she looks at the fuel gauge and realizes,  _ fuck. _ She pulls off the road and sits in the driver’s seat staring at the gathering darkness as the car coasts along the shoulder until it finally comes to a stop. 

_ Amen. _

She shuts off the radio. 

Okay.

She has a pair of flats in the backseat and a gas can in the trunk. Pink purse hanging off her arm, gas can gripped in her hand, she starts trudging toward town. 

She was three miles out when she stopped, so it’s an hour before she comes in sight of the gas station where she works, weekend mornings and three nights a week. Dan is pumping gas and he waves, and she tries not to think about the way sweat has plastered her hair to her face, how her eye makeup is smudged. (She can see it in his face, that she looks like she’s close to death.)

She holds up the gas can with a wry shrug; he motions her over. 

“You good?”

Trixie smirks. “Fill me up, Dan.” 

He winks. “Anything for you.”

As he’s pumping the gas, she thinks about letting him take her into the bathroom and bend her over the sink. Dispassionate and quick, like sucking someone’s cock at a party. 

He hands her the gas can. She slips inside to pay for the gas and buy a water and a bag of Doritos before heading back. Dan would offer to give her a ride, she knows, but his shift doesn’t end for five hours and anyway she doesn’t want to fuck him, really. 

The second walk is harder; she’s hungry and she’s wanted to cry all day but it’s like she swallowed it for too long and the tears aren’t going to come out anymore. Instead she plods in dusty flats and sucks orange cheese flavoring off of her fingers and doesn’t think,  _ doesn’t think,  _ refuses to think about anything that happened today. 

Her brain has never really listened to her, though, and she can feel the memory of Katya’s weight on her lap.

It’s not that she’s a—

Whatever. 

She has to be normal. And if something is bubbling up in her, something that’s going to make her life complicated and awful and even fucking harder, then she’s just going to have to suck it up. 

Boys like girls who kiss girls. She wonders if Dan would like watching her and Katya kiss, if he’d get hard if she told him about how Katya sat on her lap and kissed her with tongue. If he’d like her to do more, if he’d—

Her stomach is roiling. She swallows the last sip of water and crumples the empty bottle before shoving it in her purse. She feels like throwing up but instead she spits in the dirt and keeps walking. 

She almost cries with relief when the car comes into view; it’s gotten dark and she’s uncomfortably aware of how alone she is by the side of the road. But if she cries she’ll unleash everything else and she has to get home so she fills her tank and starts her car and  _ goes.  _

She rattles into her parking spot by the side of the road, marked with neon spray paint that she bought at the hardware store downtown, and slowly unlocks the front door. She winces at the  _ click  _ when the door latches shut again, but nobody stirs. The stove is on. She shuts it off. Showering would be noisy so she strips off her sweaty clothes, throws on a T-shirt and exercise shorts, and uses a baby wipe to take off the bulk of her makeup before crawling into bed.

Every inch of her aches but she can’t fall asleep; her exhausted brain keeps playing over and over the image of Katya leaning into her, the feel of Katya’s lips on hers. The strip of skin on her side that Katya touched feels like it’s burning, as if memory could scorch. She presses her fingers to her lips and stares at the ceiling. 


	3. your heart beats underground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> katya avoids the gas station for weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is really running the hell away with me. going to say at least two more chapters after this! they're still fucked up.
> 
> title from "flesh without blood."

It’s hot. Oppressively hot, like you could be crushed under the weight of it. Katya hangs on the door jamb, leaning into her brother’s room. “Damon,” she says. “Smoke?”

Damon is sitting upside down on the tattered couch in his room, feet over the back and head hanging down toward the floor. “I’m out,” he says.

Katya groans. “Completely?”

“Completely.”

“Can you go to the gas station for me?”

Damon is playing a racing game upside down, and he rounds a sharp bend before pausing to make eye contact. “It’s _hot,”_ he says.

“I know,” Katya says mournfully.

“I’m not going outside.”

Katya rolls her eyes and slams his bedroom door shut.

She’s made it weeks, walking across town to the other gas station or bumming from Damon. But it’s too hot to walk a three-mile round trip and Damon is being a dick and she crosses her arms and tries to pretend that she doesn’t _need_ a cigarette.

She watches two hours of cartoons on TV and by the end she's bouncing her leg uncontrollably, worrying her lower lip with her fingers. She throws on some clothes, baggy shorts over skinny legs, and steps out the door.

She circles the gas station five times before she goes inside. She was waiting for someone to come by so she could pretend to be underage and beg for mercy, but no one comes because it’s hotter than the devil’s asshole and she’s the only idiot who decided to go outside for a fucking cigarette.

The door beeps as she steps inside. Her heart is thudding in her chest but Trixie’s not at the counter and she lets herself breathe for a minute, steps up and asks for a pack of Marlboros from the skinny kid behind the counter who mumbles out a request for her ID.

“You’re new?” she asks in a way that probably comes across as more condescending than she means it.

He nods in a jerky, frenetic way.

“Tommy,” says a voice, “you all set?” and then Trixie has rounded the counter looking uninterested but then she sees Katya and Katya sees her and they both freeze.

“Y-yeah,” Tommy is saying, “I just need to—how do I—” He’s fumbling with the cash register. Katya is holding out her ten-dollar bill in a sweaty hand and he won’t take it because he can’t get the drawer open, and Trixie doesn’t help because she’s staring, and staring, and finally Katya drops the bill onto the counter and whispers “just keep the change” and _bolts._

She doesn’t realize until she’s crossed the parking lot that she left her cigarettes on the counter. She stands motionless on the sidewalk, with sweat sticking her shirt to her back because she can’t go back but she walked all this way and—

“Katya!” someone calls, only it’s not _someone;_ it’s Trixie and she’s running out breathless with a pack of cigarettes and Katya can’t move so she stands and watches and her heart pounds, _thump-thump, thump-thump._

“You forgot these,” she says unnecessarily, thrusting them into Katya’s hands.

“Thanks,” Katya says. She feels like she’s moving through setting concrete.

“I haven’t seen you around much,” says Trixie.

Katya wants to break into hysterical laughter. Instead she shrugs uncomfortably, feeling like her bones are knocking against each other when she moves.

“Can we uh—” Trixie jerks her head toward the back of the building. “Talk?”

It’s only because Katya hasn’t made it through her shock that she nods. Trixie unlocks a side door that reads _Employees Only_ and Katya follows her into a small, windowless room stocked with pallets of chips and Arizona iced teas and extra toilet paper. Trixie paces and Katya watches her, watches her pace back and forth in her stupid pink wedges, and she doesn’t want to be here.

The door is to her right. She doesn’t leave.

“I don’t want to do this,” Trixie says. She’s not looking at Katya.

“Then don’t,” says Katya. She has a hangnail on her left thumb and she bites at it, tearing back the strip of skin until she reaches something red and raw underneath.

Trixie’s looking at her now, wide-eyed and chewing on her lip, and Katya can’t stand to be looked at like that.

She lights a cigarette and looks studiously away.

“Can we just be friends again?” Trixie’s little laugh echoes in the small space. “I know we were only friends for like two seconds, but—I liked it.”

Katya feels nauseous. She picks at the stray elastic in the waistband of her shorts as she says, “Okay.” She takes another drag and closes her eyes and for the moment that the smoke sits in her lungs she can pretend that she’s anywhere else.

The exhale brings her back to the gas station stockroom. Trixie looks like she’s about to cry and Katya herself is on the verge of—a panic attack, maybe—and she can feel her pulse pounding in her neck. “Okay,” she says again. She wants to run away again but instead she jerks her head toward the door. “Can we go out? I feel like I’m going to suffocate.”

Trixie nods. Turning to walk out gives her the opportunity to wipe at the tears welling in her eyes, and Katya pretends not to notice as she follows.

They lean against the back wall of the gas station. Trixie’s looking straight ahead at the NO PARKING ANY TIME sign by the rarely-used diesel pump. A handwritten note taped below it reads: _People need to use this pump, asshole,_ in rounded cursive, followed by a heart.

Katya points. “Did you write that?”

Trixie smirks. “That’s me!” She frames her face with her hand and pulls out a fake but glimmering smile. She’s waiting for some kind of response, but Katya’s running out of things to say without saying _Please will you kiss me again_ so instead she brings her cigarette to her lips again and breathes smoke into the summer air.

 


	4. falling off the edge with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they drink in a parking lot, and kiss again, and everyone has a lot of complicated feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> second-to-last chapter, i think. longer than chapter 3 and things actually happen...nice.
> 
> title from "pin," which kind of inspired this whole thing in the first place.

Trixie calls her on a Wednesday night. “I just worked a double and I need booze,” she says. “Join me?”

Katya has watched seven episodes of _I Dream of Jeannie_ in a row on the nostalgia channel, which keeps trying to sell her hair plugs during commercial breaks. She’s been watching with her head at the foot of her bed, resting her chin in her hands.

She rolls onto her back, phone in her hand. Thinks about drinking and decides sure, fine, if she doesn’t drink too much or do anything stupid, and...

She realizes she’s been silent for too long; she says, “Yeah, where?”

“I’ll pick you up,” says Trixie. “Five minutes.”

Katya launches herself up from the bed and pulls on jeans and a marginally clean shirt. She peers into the mirror and attacks her eyes with liner. When she hears Trixie pull up she’s putting on bright red lipstick, and the rattle of the car makes her second-guess herself; she tries to wipe off her lipstick with a tissue but just ends up smearing it outside the line of her lips.

Trixie honks, and Katya throws away the tissue and runs down the stairs, rubbing at stray lipstick with the pad of her fingertip. “Going out!” she yells into the house as she runs out the door.

Being back in the car is startling. It smells the same, like weed and abandoned McDonald’s leftovers and makeup supplies left too long in the sun, and Katya tries not to think about the last time she was sitting in this passenger seat. A plastic grocery bag at her feet turns out to contain a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and she smirks at Trixie. “Didn’t take you for a whiskey girl.”

Trixie, almost blushing, says, “Shut up! It’s my mom’s.”

Katya cackles, and it’s nice for a minute, to just be friends. Trixie pulls into the darkened parking lot of a strip mall where the places that aren’t closed for the evening are closed for good; the only ones left in business are a gyro place, a tattoo parlor, and a dentist’s office. They park in front of a sign that says HOT AND FRESH! over a faded cartoon of a pizza.

They sit on the hood, passing the bottle of Jack between them. Trixie drinks first and then leans back, and Katya tilts her head back to see what Trixie’s seeing. it’s almost midnight and the stars are out in full force but the moon has waned to almost nothing, a sliver of silver light in the sky.

Katya drinks whiskey from the bottle and lets it burn down her throat and into her chest. She hasn’t had a drink in a while because she’s trying to be good, really, and it hits her harder than she’s used to, tingling in her legs and fingers.

“How was work?” she asks, because there’s nothing else to say, and Trixie snorts.

“Come on, bitch, don’t get fake on me now.”

Katya chuckles, more an exhalation than anything, and takes another slug from the bottle. “Okay, fine, freak. How do you feel about mortality, Miss Trixie?”

“Oh, you know”—Trixie puts on her fake voice again, high-pitched and breathy—“I just think that every day is a gift, and you have to take life as it comes…”

Katya shrieks with laughter. “Well, good for you, Lady Prozac.”

Trixie looks pleased, almost grateful, at Katya’s laughter. “God, I love being drunk,” she says.

Katya rolls her eyes. “Me too, dumbass.”

“Oh shit!” Trixie scrambles upright again. “I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot, are you okay? Like, to be here and drink with me?”

Katya nods. “I’m, you know.” She shrugs. “We’ll see where moderation gets me.”

Trixie relaxes a little, but she looks at Katya out of the corner of her eye. “If you get sloppy, I’m cutting you off.”

Katya grins. “Come on. I’m always sloppy.”

Trixie shoves her and Katya tries not to think about the momentary contact between Trixie’s hand and her arm. She takes one more sip and then hands the bottle over to Trixie. “Enforce this,” she says, and she’s kind of joking but Trixie nods seriously and she finds she’s...grateful. Her head is spinning just enough and Trixie takes another slug before setting the bottle on the ground.

They both lean back then, and look up at the sky. The street light nearby makes for poor stargazing, but Katya stares up at the few stars she can see. She thinks she can feel the heat of Trixie’s body next to her, but it’s a warm night and she might be imagining it, just like she might be imagining the way Trixie’s been looking at her all night. The way her eyes keep flicking to her and then away.

“Katya?” Trixie says, and Katya turns to find Trixie lying on her side on the hood of the car, facing her.

“Hmm?” Trixie’s eyes are big and brown. She says she wants blue contacts to match her bleached hair but Katya likes them like this, deep and warm.

“Just…” She hesitates. “Nothing.”

“No, what? Come on.” Katya’s smiling and she wants Trixie to be too, wants her to smile back and say I think I might like you.

Trixie shakes her head. “Nothing, really.” She turns on her back and looks at the sky again, but Katya stays on her side and looks at the side of Trixie’s head, at her bare freckle-dusted shoulder.

It’s a stupid urge. But she’s never been good at impulse control and she’s a little drunk and she leans forward and kisses Trixie’s upper arm.

Trixie twitches, startled, and Katya feels her face burn red but she doesn’t stop looking at Trixie because she’s an idiot and probably a masochist, or she just has no sense of self-preservation.

Trixie turns on her side again. She doesn’t say anything and her eyes are unfocused, but she inches forward and Katya takes in a breath and then moves in to meet her.

She is so, so stupid.

It’s unstable, to be making out on your side on the hood of a rickety car, but Katya’s heart is thumping and she’s remembering vividly the moment last time when Trixie’s eyes turned stony and cold and somehow it seems like the answer is just to keep going. Just don't stop.

Trixie’s teeth worry Katya’s lip, not biting but running along it back and forth, more like a nervous habit than a kiss. Katya rests her hand against Trixie’s waist and draws her in so they’re flush against each other, or as much as they can be with their legs bracing to keep from sliding off the car. Trixie is gripping the back of her neck, vicelike, nails digging in almost painfully. Katya feels more tender than she’s used to, kissing gently until Trixie seems to relax and her mouth opens and Katya tastes her tongue and she’s kissing back. For an instant the everything softens around her and she feels _right._

She pulls back to catch her breath, and sees Trixie’s eyes screwed shut.

Something cold washes over her. “Trixie,” she says.

Trixie shakes her head. “Shut up.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Trixie’s shaking her head no but what she’s saying is “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

“I’m—I’m sorry, I don’t—”

Trixie sits up and looks away, arms crossed over her chest. “I can’t do this,” she says.

Katya looks at the bottle of Jack on the asphalt and thinks about swallowing the rest of it.

She doesn’t. She looks down at her knees and says, “Do what?”

“I can’t _be_ this, Katya.”

Katya doesn’t say _Why not?_ because she knows.

They sit in silence for a while. “Do you want to go home?” she asks.

Softly, Trixie says, “I don’t know if I’m good to drive.” She breathes out. “And no.”

“Okay,” says Katya. “Then we’ll stay.”

She reaches for Trixie's hand, and Trixie holds on tight.


	5. if you can't scream then swallow it down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it all comes to a head. some things are irreconcilable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY.
> 
> title from art angels as always, this time from the translation of the last line of "scream," taken from [here](https://genius.com/Grimes-scream-lyrics).

Trixie’s breathless all the time now. It's like being in love except terrifying, awful; she has dark red marks just under the line where her shirts fall and she meets Katya behind the gas station when she comes in for cigarettes and they steal each other’s breath and sometimes Trixie’s heart feels full to bursting.

She stares up at the ceiling at night and thinks about Katya’s hands and how to burn them out of her brain. This house always makes her want to be dead, a little, but she doesn’t have anywhere else. Katya tells her _Stay, come home with me, they don’t mind,_ but Trixie can’t think about sleeping in Katya’s bed. Besides, she doesn’t like the way other people’s parents look at her.

She’s doing just fine, she thinks bitterly, and digs her nails into her stomach.

She calls Katya because she’s sad, and Katya answers; anger burns in Trixie's gut and she doesn’t know why except that Katya should _know better._

“What’s up?” says Katya, and Trixie sighs into the phone and hears it crackle.

“I don’t want to be here,” she says. “Let’s just—let’s go somewhere, away, like...fuck, just get me out of here.”

A pause. “Okay,” says Katya.

“What?” Trixie’s heart is thudding and her face has flushed hot. _Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

“Like, fuck it, let’s go. I have two hundred bucks and I want to get out. Get on a bus with me.”

The words startle laughter from Trixie’s lips. “So you want to be homeless.”

“I don’t know, we’d get jobs, we’d figure it out! Just...you hate it here, I hate it here, let’s _go.”_

Trixie shudders out a breath, holding herself. “I...can’t.”

Katya lets out what sounds like a nervous laugh. “What is _keeping_ you here?”

Trixie shakes her head and looks at the ceiling. She’s been tracing patterns and shapes in the drywall since she was a kid, and she finds a familiar one and follows its outline with her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says. “I just—I can’t, okay. My mom is here, with my—stepdad—and until he fucking dies or something…”

She’s never mentioned him before, and it’s all she says.

“Oh,” says Katya.

“You should go, though,” says Trixie. Saying it, she feels like someone’s reached into her guts and twisted them.

There’s a long pause, and she realizes how that could come across but it’s too late now and maybe she means it.

“You think so?” Katya asks.

Trixie exhales. Backtracks. “No, dumbass. Do you want to fucking die on the street?”

Katya’s laughter wheezes out of her. “God.” Pause. “When do you get off work tomorrow?”

Trixie doesn’t want to think about seeing her again, about the hot sick feeling that Katya puts in her stomach. “I don't know.”

“Two, like usual?”

“Um...it depends.” She feels a pounding headache start in her temples.

“You can say that you don’t want to see me,” says Katya. She sounds...not sad, exactly. More like she’s been expecting this.

“I—” She fingers the flowering bruises on her chest. “Come by around two, I guess. Even if I’m not getting off we can talk a little.”

“Oh, I’ll get you off,” Katya says, and chortles.

Trixie bites hard into her lip and tries to laugh. Her body temperature jumps a couple notches and she wants to throw up, or claw off her skin and stop existing. “I’ll see you,” she says, and hangs up.

* * *

Trixie ends up working til three, because Ryan shows up late. Katya loiters in the back while Trixie counts her cash. She’s wearing cut-off shorts with combat boots and probably, Trixie knows from experience, no socks. Looking down at the counter, she smiles despite herself.

Ryan smirks at her when he sees Katya, and winks. Trixie can’t tell if he knows or if he thinks Katya’s hot, or what, but either way she feels sick to her stomach. “I restocked the cigarettes,” she says, not looking at him. “Don’t forget to punch in.”

Katya follows her out the door. Trixie doesn’t look back but she can hear the thumping of Katya’s boots against the hot pavement, and she crosses the street. Just down the road is a group home, where forlorn-looking kids come and go without staying long. A tire swing used to dangle from a tree branch in the front yard, but the only thing left of it is the frayed end of a rope that blows in the wind.

Trixie sits down on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. Katya follows suit, crossing her legs, bony knees out to each side.

“You okay?” Katya asks.

Trixie sucks air through her teeth and looks down, tearing blades of grass out of the dirt. “I don’t know.”

“Can I help?”

Trixie shakes her head. She’s watching the movement of her own hands, the way her thumb worries the hem of her skirt. “I think I’m just…” She can’t form the words, can’t say—whatever you say when you’re breaking someone’s heart, like _I’m fucked beyond repair and it’s not your fault._

Katya doesn’t look heartbroken. Probably because Trixie hasn’t said anything yet.

She says, “I can’t do this.”

“I know,” says Katya, “I know, but you—we can be okay, you know?” She’s tapping her fingers frantically on her thigh. “It’s hard but it’s not, like. It’s not impossible.”

Trixie swallows bile. Or tears, maybe. “I can’t,” she says. “I can’t—I can’t.” _It’ll crush me,_ she feels like saying, but doesn’t.

Katya’s nodding but the nodding goes on and on until it turns into rocking and she’s sitting there rocking, rocking, back and forth and back and forth.

Trixie opens her mouth to say something reassuring. Closes it. “I want to,” she says finally.

Katya wraps her arms around her knees, which she’s drawn up to her chin. “I know,” she says in a small voice.

She starts to say _maybe someday_ and then she’s afraid to because: what if Katya tries to wait for her? What if Katya tries to give her time to figure things out when what she really means by _maybe someday_ is _maybe in another life, in a universe where things aren’t so fucked up?_

Katya’s chewing on her lip. “Maybe I _will_ leave,” she says. She’s looking at the ground.

“You don’t have to hide from me,” says Trixie. “You’re still my friend—” But she doesn’t believe it and neither does Katya.

“It’s not hiding,” says Katya. This time it sounds like the truth. “I always wanted to go.”

“I know,” says Trixie, and she doesn’t say _me too_ because it doesn’t matter.

“I don’t want to leave you here.”

Katya sounds like she might be crying. Trixie doesn’t look because then she’ll cry too and she’s sick to her stomach with the thought of the two of them crying on each other while they—

Her mind stops short of the obvious words for what is happening. The point is, she can’t look at Katya. She says, “I’ll be fine,” but it doesn’t feel convincing.

“Yeah?”

Trixie finally looks up. Katya’s face is puffy from crying. “I always am,” she says. And smiles, lopsided.

* * *

Katya leaves. Trixie doesn’t find out until after, when Katya’s brother comes into the gas station and mentions that she’s in the city, sharing a room with a parolee and washing dishes at a restaurant.

“She doing well?” Trixie asks blandly, not looking at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think she’s weirdly kind of happy there.”

“Good,” says Trixie, scuffing her shoe against the linoleum. “That’s—that’s good.”

She’s bitten off all her lipstick. Katya’s brother heads through the door and Trixie stares unseeing at the back wall, hand pressed to her sternum to slow her shuddering breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who came along for the ride! i was thinking this would be the end of this for good but my brain keeps going so i'm not going to completely rule out the possibility of an epilogue or a sequel...no promises though. feedback always appreciated and thank you so much to everyone who's commented in the past!


	6. epilogue: three years later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was already set three years later before i realized just a second ago that "three years later" is also technically a lyric from art angels. grimes really came through for me on this one.
> 
> anyway this is REALLY ACTUALLY THE END, I PROMISE. i mean it's also a beginning but it's the end in that i am not writing any more of this.
> 
> also i don't know why every drag race fic i write has so much weed because i really do not smoke at all

Katya’s in the laundromat over-filling a dryer when she sees her: bleached hair with an inch of roots pulled back in a ponytail, a stain on her horrendous pink sweatpants. Orange writing on the back reads JUICY.

“Hey Blondie!” Katya shouts across the room, before she has time to think better of it. “You’ve got something on your ass!”

Trixie whips around, fully prepared to take someone down—and she freezes as she sees Katya. It’s a deer-in-headlights look that Katya knows, one she would probably be wearing herself if Trixie had been the one to call out to her in a city laundromat.

Katya waves, offering a crooked smile.

Trixie holds up one finger— _just a sec—_ and pushes quarters into the slot in her machine until it reluctantly comes to life. Katya’s laundry-day outfit is approximately as bad as Trixie’s: a black and white T-shirt reading _I F**KED YOUR GIRLFRIEND_ and a pair of red and white zig-zag balloon pants.

Trixie crosses the floor and comes to a stop across the aisle from Katya, head cocked to one side. She doesn’t speak for a moment, and when she does, her voice sounds different. “Hey, stranger,” she says.

Katya chuckles but it feels forced, because it really is like being greeted by someone you’ve never met. “Hey.”

They stand in silence for a minute, Katya swaying from side to side, Trixie picking at her acrylic nails.

“What are you doing here?” Katya says finally. She means it to be curious but she can’t tell how it comes across, when it leaves her mouth.

Trixie shrugs. “Oh, you know. Whatever.”

Katya rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, bitch, I haven’t seen you in years. Tell me _something.”_

Something like a smile hits Trixie, finally, and she says, “Divorce went through. My mom bought me bus tickets with her alimony.”

“Shit,” says Katya. “Good for her.”

Trixie nods. “Are you, uh—are you still—you know. Good?”

Katya smiles, crooked. “Up and down.”

“So, like always?”

“Like always.” She wrinkles her nose. “My new roommates leave me alone. And uh, I…” She hesitates because it’s not that big a deal, not in the grand scheme of things. It’s stupid. “I sold something. Some art. A couple months ago.”

“Holy shit, Katya!” Trixie’s really smiling now, grinning. “That’s—that’s so fucking cool, seriously. What was it?”

Katya shrugs, embarrassed. “A, uh. I guess a sculpture. Kind of, you know, blood and fucked-up body parts.”

Trixie snorts. “So you’re still a freak.” She hasn’t stopped smiling, though.

Katya rolls her eyes, strikes a pose. “Freaky dyke in the big city.” She gestures to the lettering on her shirt.

“Do you want to—” Trixie starts, and then stops.

Katya’s dryer clanks behind her. She kicks it with her heel, which only adds to the clamor. “Do I want to...?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Go out for coffee?” It’s lame, and it shows in Trixie’s face that she knows it.

Katya cackles. “Bitch. If you’re paying city prices.”

Trixie grins back at her. “Loiter inside a coffee shop until we get kicked out?”

“I don’t like getting kicked out of places.” She looks at Trixie: clumpy mascara framing big brown eyes. Stupid, she thinks to herself, stupid, stupid, you shouldn’t have called out to her like that. You should have let her go by and used a different laundromat for the rest of your life and then you wouldn’t have this tight seized feeling in your chest. “Want to come over? We can steal my roommate’s weed.”

Katya’s tried to learn to recognize her own panic attacks, and she’s still really bad at it, but she doesn’t think this is one. Her heart is pounding really fast, though, so: maybe.

Trixie looks at her toes (she’s wearing destroyed flats that used to be white, maybe, in a former life) before answering. “Mhm.” She gestures to her laundry. “I’m here for like, another hour.”

“Well you’re in luck,” Katya says. “I live upstairs.”

“Yeah, oh-kayyyy,” says Trixie, eye-rolling disbelief slathered like butter.

“What, you think I’m going to lead you into a sewer grate or something?”

Trixie shrugs. “Seems in-character.”

It’s the kind of thing she feels like elbowing Trixie for, but they’re facing each other and besides, maybe they don’t know each other like that anymore. She’s not sure if she could touch Trixie, even if she had the chance. Like Trixie’s skin might shock her. Aversion therapy; rats in a cage.

Trixie walks away, stumping toward the door, but she turns around and beckons with her head. “If you’re trying to murder me, I have several _extremely_ involved family members who keep very close tabs on me.” She cracks herself up.

Katya smirks, and follows her.

They head around the back and Katya wrestles with the key. “Fucking lock sticks.”

“Or you’ve lured me back here to slit my throat and drink my blood.”

It’s another joke that falls flat. There’s too much in the air between them; it changes everything that crosses the distance.

Katya gets the door open eventually and they climb two flights of stairs before emerging in a dingy stairwell with a door in front of them. A crude approximation of a skull is carved into one corner, revealing light wood beneath the paint.

“You?” Trixie says.

“Believe it or not, that was there when I moved in.” She kicks the door to unstick it. “Wards against vampires and unhinged bitches with daddy issues.” She winks. “His name is Hector. I’ll tell him you can’t have daddy issues if you never met your dad.”

“Watch me,” says Trixie. She strikes a pose and for a second they break through the fog between them and Katya chortles and lets her in.

“Want anything? I have, uh. Pickles and mustard. And Tavia has weed that I can repossess because she borrowed fifteen bucks from me last week.”

Trixie shrugs.

Katya rolls herself a joint and balances on a rickety stool in the living room, blowing smoke in Trixie’s face.

Trixie winces, but in a way that’s almost friendly. “Shit,” she says.

“So,” Katya says, at the end of an exhale, “Miss Mattel, how fare your Sapphic desires?”

Trixie chokes on—nothing, since she accepted no weed, pickles, or mustard. It’s almost laughter but it gets stifled. What comes out instead is: “I’m sorry.”

The joint smolders between Katya’s fingers as she blinks, startled. “You’re what?”

Trixie crosses her arms over her chest, and Katya thinks for a second, _No, don’t do that,_ and then berates herself for having the thought processes of a dirty old man. “I am,” Trixie says. “I wasn’t—there were so many things happening in my brain that I wasn’t ready to deal with that particular—you know.” She laughs, awkward. “Situation.”

Ash hits the floor, and Katya absently grinds it into the floor with her heel. She’s speechless. Rare for her. “You—” she starts to say, and then stops because there’s nowhere for it to go.

“I’m sorry if you didn’t want me to bring this up, or whatever,” says Trixie. She looks devastatingly forlorn.

“No,” says Katya. “No, I mean—it’s fine! Of course it’s fine. I just...that’s not what I was asking. You didn’t—need to apologize. It’s all a long time ago.” She’s only twenty-one but she feels ancient compared to the version of herself who existed during that colt-legged teenage summer.

“It’s not really, though,” says Trixie. “It’s...I mean, maybe I’ve been thinking about it more than y—” She stops herself halfway through the thought, and Katya’s heart thuds.

“No, no, Trixie, that’s not what I meant. I was, you know, obviously I was devastated and I still—” She chokes too but keeps going. “I still think about it, it’s one of those formative... Like you know those girls you’ll always be a little bit in love with, no matter how far you move on?”

She’s said too much, now, maybe.

Trixie’s biting the gloss off her lips. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah. I know.”

Katya’s hand twitches with trying not to take Trixie’s. She’s so focused on this inaction that she forgets to speak, and they lapse entirely into silence.

Finally Katya looks up and says, softly, “Trixie?” Her chest is seized with panic as she rehearses her next words. Sweat saturates her shirt.

Trixie raises her eyes.

“You think—like, things are a lot less shitty now.” She swallows hard. “You think maybe you’d want to go out with me sometime? Like for real?”

“Yeah,” says Trixie, fast like she’s afraid the offer will disappear. “Yes. Yeah.”

“Okay,” Katya says, and then she’s laughing with something like relief. “Fuck, okay, yeah.” She chews on her lower lip. “I’m, uh. I’m really glad I sexually harassed you in the laundromat.”

Trixie snorts. “Oh my God. Give me that fucking joint, I’m not sitting here sober anymore.”

When Katya passes the joint and her hand brushes Trixie’s, her instinct is to jerk away.

She doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to everyone who read and left feedback throughout the process! and thank you especially if you read this before and then returned after [garbled static sound] months to read this epilogue. any comments are still always appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> new tumblr url to match the ao3 username! find me @twobirdsofficial


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